Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

G'day all,

I've started using OSM more and more and I find it frustrating that many house addresses are not available in OSM. I would like to help by tracing many houses using ESRI as a base map (feel free to audit my history on OSM under the name "Moult"). I would also like to add address information (addr:housenumber and addr:street) to these ways however I don't think that we are meant to be copying from Google maps. Is there another map source that has addresses that we can use? Perhaps some form of government cadastre map? Is that allowed?

> I've started using OSM more and more and I find it frustrating that many house addresses are not available in OSM. I would like to help by tracing many houses using ESRI as a base map (feel free to audit my history on OSM under the name "Moult"). I would also like to add address information (addr:housenumber and addr:street) to these ways however I don't think that we are meant to be copying from Google maps. Is there another map source that has addresses that we can use? Perhaps some form of government cadastre map? Is that allowed?
>
> ​Dion Moult​

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

I've started using OSM more and more and I find it frustrating that many house addresses are not available in OSM. I would like to help by tracing many houses using ESRI as a base map (feel free to audit my history on OSM under the name "Moult"). I would also like to add address information (addr:housenumber and addr:street) to these ways however I don't think that we are meant to be copying from Google maps. Is there another map source that has addresses that we can use? Perhaps some form of government cadastre map? Is that allowed?

What do you mean by "ESRI as a base map" do you mean the "ESRI World Imagery" available in ID and JOSM? ESRI's map layers are not allowed, just like Google Maps or Google Street View which must not be used as we don't have the copyright permissions to use these.

Joel H is right about the LPI Base Map as a source of addresses, which we do have an explicit permission for (not the new OSMF waiver though).

The building outlines are best obtained from the LPI Imagery which has the highest resolution and isn't too old.

Not sure how you would find the addr:street? I'd say don't add this unless you know from a survey or local_knowledge, especially around corners it can be tricky. Besides most of the time it can be guessed already by data consumers snapping to the nearest road segment.

PS. There is also GNAF which has address data Australia wide which you can use with OSM, but not import into OSM. Personally I use this in a lot of maps and mobile apps (OsmAnd, you should be able to get it into maps.me too).

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

+1 for the LIP Imagery and Base Map.
I have been doing a few places - the shopping areas for tourist
spots as that is where I think most of navigation demand is. At
the centres of a block the street name is fairly obvious. The
corners can be tricky for the street name .. but if the number
flows sequentially in one direction and non sequentially in the
other you can extrapolate that the street name is the same as for
the sequential numbers.

In Sydneys CBD the LIP Imagery is fairly up to date, in Coffs
Harbour the DigitalGlobe Standard Imagery is more upto date.

Good luck, there is a lot to do .. you may find it best to do the
start and end of each street as a start to the house numbers, you
'll get more done and it will serve as a guide for the people
trying to navigate.
Oh .. and it is not necessary to map the buildings .. you just
need a node with the address information ..that will speed things
up too. But for the shopping areas I have been adding the building
outlines too.

I've started using OSM more and more and I find it
frustrating that many house addresses are not available in
OSM. I would like to help by tracing many houses using
ESRI as a base map (feel free to audit my history on OSM
under the name "Moult"). I would also like to add address
information (addr:housenumber and addr:street) to these
ways however I don't think that we are meant to be copying
from Google maps. Is there another map source that has
addresses that we can use? Perhaps some form of government
cadastre map? Is that allowed?

What do you mean by "ESRI
as a base map" do you mean the "ESRI World Imagery" available
in ID and JOSM? ESRI's map layers are not allowed, just
like Google Maps or Google Street View which must not be
used as we don't have the copyright permissions to use
these.

Joel H is right about the LPI Base Map as a source of
addresses, which we do have an explicit permission for
(not the new OSMF waiver though).

The building outlines are best obtained from the LPI
Imagery which has the highest resolution and isn't too
old.

Not sure how you would find the addr:street? I'd say
don't add this unless you know from a survey or
local_knowledge, especially around corners it can be
tricky. Besides most of the time it can be guessed already
by data consumers snapping to the nearest road segment.

PS. There is also GNAF which has address data Australia
wide which you can use with OSM, but not import into OSM.
Personally I use this in a lot of maps and mobile apps
(OsmAnd, you should be able to get it into maps.me
too).

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

What do you mean by "ESRI as a base map" do you mean the "ESRI World Imagery" available in ID and JOSM? ESRI's map layers are not allowed, just like Google Maps or Google Street View which must not be used as we don't have the copyright permissions to use these.

The easiest way to do this is to select the “Esri satellite imagery” layer as an option in either iD or JOSM.

Legal permissions

Esri and its imagery contributors grant Users the non-exclusive right to use the World Imagery map to trace features and validate edits in the creation of vector data. Users that create vector data from the World Imagery map may want to publicly share that vector data through a GIS data clearinghouse of its own or through another open data site. This public sharing could be achieved through ArcGIS Open Data or the OpenStreetMap (OSM) Initiative. For ArcGIS users that want to contribute such vector data to OSM, Esri provides applications and services directly accessible from ArcGIS platform. Users acknowledge that any vector data contributed to OSM is then governed by and released under the OpenStreetMap License (e.g. ODbL).

Except for the additional limited rights granted above, any and all other uses of the World Imagery map remain subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Esri Master Agreement or Terms of Use, as applicable. Esri and its imagery contributors retain all right, title, and interest in and to their respective imagery data contributed to the World Imagery map. (source)

> From: Andrew Harvey <[hidden email]>
> Sent: Monday, 4 June 2018 05:13
> To: [hidden email]> Subject: Re: [talk-au] Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney
>
>
>
> What do you mean by "ESRI as a base map" do you mean the "ESRI World
> Imagery" available in ID and JOSM? ESRI's map layers are not allowed, just
> like Google Maps or Google Street View which must not be used as we don't
> have the copyright permissions to use these.
>
>
>
>
>
> That statement does not seem to match the information on the wiki?
>
>
>
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Esri#Legal_permissions>
>
>
> Using Esri imagery in editors
>
> The easiest way to do this is to select the “Esri satellite imagery” layer
> as an option in either iD or JOSM.
>
> Legal permissions
>
> Esri and its imagery contributors grant Users the non-exclusive right to use
> the World Imagery map to trace features and validate edits in the creation
> of vector data. Users that create vector data from the World Imagery map may
> want to publicly share that vector data through a GIS data clearinghouse of
> its own or through another open data site. This public sharing could be
> achieved through ArcGIS Open Data or the OpenStreetMap (OSM) Initiative. For
> ArcGIS users that want to contribute such vector data to OSM, Esri provides
> applications and services directly accessible from ArcGIS platform. Users
> acknowledge that any vector data contributed to OSM is then governed by and
> released under the OpenStreetMap License (e.g. ODbL).
>
> Except for the additional limited rights granted above, any and all other
> uses of the World Imagery map remain subject to the terms and conditions set
> forth in the Esri Master Agreement or Terms of Use, as applicable. Esri and
> its imagery contributors retain all right, title, and interest in and to
> their respective imagery data contributed to the World Imagery map. (source)
>
> Attribution should be in either source=Esri or imagery_used=Esri tags on a
> changeset.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Talk-au mailing list
> [hidden email]> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au>

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

I've started using OSM more and more and I find it
frustrating that many house addresses are not available in
OSM. I would like to help by tracing many houses using
ESRI as a base map (feel free to audit my history on OSM
under the name "Moult"). I would also like to add address
information (addr:housenumber and addr:street) to these
ways however I don't think that we are meant to be copying
from Google maps. Is there another map source that has
addresses that we can use? Perhaps some form of government
cadastre map? Is that allowed?

What do you mean by "ESRI
as a base map" do you mean the "ESRI World Imagery" available
in ID and JOSM? ESRI's map layers are not allowed, just
like Google Maps or Google Street View which must not be
used as we don't have the copyright permissions to use
these.

I've started using OSM more and more and I find it
frustrating that many house addresses are not available in
OSM. I would like to help by tracing many houses using
ESRI as a base map (feel free to audit my history on OSM
under the name "Moult"). I would also like to add address
information (addr:housenumber and addr:street) to these
ways however I don't think that we are meant to be copying
from Google maps. Is there another map source that has
addresses that we can use? Perhaps some form of government
cadastre map? Is that allowed?

What do you mean by "ESRI
as a base map" do you mean the "ESRI World Imagery" available
in ID and JOSM? ESRI's map layers are not allowed, just
like Google Maps or Google Street View which must not be
used as we don't have the copyright permissions to use
these.

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

Yes, I have used the ESRI imagery layer. Thanks for the heads up of the LPI base map. Before I go too far, can one of you please look at the work I've done so far if I'm doing things correctly? Here is a small sample in the suburb of Epping that I have traced houses and added addresses:

In that scenario I did not trace off the LPI imagery, but instead traced off ESRI. I noticed if I enable the LPI imagery, the houses don't line up. Should this be fixed? If so, what's the best way?

I have added both addr:housenumber and addr:street. Points which I am unsure about how I have tagged and would like comments are the addr:housenumber=18;2/18, the usage of service=driveway to link to the entrance=house, and the multiple buildings which have addr:housenumber=28-30.

Any other QA comments would also be much appreciated so I can improve.

In addition, a few months ago I also traced all of the houses which you can see here, and added tags for building=house and levels where appropriate:

> On 3 June 2018 at 21:48, Dion Moult <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> > I've started using OSM more and more and I find it frustrating that many house addresses are not available in OSM. I would like to help by tracing many houses using ESRI as a base map (feel free to audit my history on OSM under the name "Moult"). I would also like to add address information (addr:housenumber and addr:street) to these ways however I don't think that we are meant to be copying from Google maps. Is there another map source that has addresses that we can use? Perhaps some form of government cadastre map? Is that allowed?
>
> What do you mean by "ESRI as a base map" do you mean the "ESRI World Imagery" available in ID and JOSM? ESRI's map layers are not allowed, just like Google Maps or Google Street View which must not be used as we don't have the copyright permissions to use these.
>
> Joel H is right about the LPI Base Map as a source of addresses, which we do have an explicit permission for (not the new OSMF waiver though).
>
> The building outlines are best obtained from the LPI Imagery which has the highest resolution and isn't too old.
>
> Not sure how you would find the addr:street? I'd say don't add this unless you know from a survey or local_knowledge, especially around corners it can be tricky. Besides most of the time it can be guessed already by data consumers snapping to the nearest road segment.
>
> PS. There is also GNAF which has address data Australia wide which you can use with OSM, but not import into OSM. Personally I use this in a lot of maps and mobile apps (OsmAnd, you should be able to get it into maps.me too).

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

On 06/06/18 08:51, Dion Moult wrote:
> Thanks Andrew et all,
>
> Yes, I have used the ESRI imagery layer. Thanks for the heads up of the LPI base map. Before I go too far, can one of you please look at the work I've done so far if I'm doing things correctly? Here is a small sample in the suburb of Epping that I have traced houses and added addresses:
>
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/-33.78071/151.06628>
> In that scenario I did not trace off the LPI imagery, but instead traced off ESRI. I noticed if I enable the LPI imagery, the houses don't line up. Should this be fixed? If so, what's the best way?

Any imagery can have a 'offset' from where it should be. And that offset will vary as you go up and down hills.

The LPI Imagery has much better resolution and less parallax error than the other sources .. I prefer it to any other images for its accuracy.

That said it is usefull to check with other images for more up to date things. I found in Coffs Harbour that the DigitalGlobe stuff is more current.

I'll leave others to comment on that address stuff.. no expert on that (yet). :)

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

As a continuation of this thread just wondering if there was a way to divide up Sydney into a grid and automatically check the progress of whether that zone has been mapped or not. Is there a standard approach for this?

On 06/06/18 08:51, Dion Moult wrote:> Thanks Andrew et all,>> Yes, I have used the ESRI imagery layer. Thanks for the heads up of the LPI base map. Before I go too far, can one of you please look at the work I've done so far if I'm doing things correctly? Here is a small sample in the suburb of Epping that I have traced houses and added addresses:>> https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/-33.78071/151.06628>> In that scenario I did not trace off the LPI imagery, but instead traced off ESRI. I noticed if I enable the LPI imagery, the houses don't line up. Should this be fixed? If so, what's the best way?

Any imagery can have a 'offset' from where it should be. And that offset will vary as you go up and down hills.

The LPI Imagery has much better resolution and less parallax error than the other sources .. I prefer it to any other images for its accuracy.

That said it is usefull to check with other images for more up to date things. I found in Coffs Harbour that the DigitalGlobe stuff is more current.

I'll leave others to comment on that address stuff.. no expert on that (yet). :)

As a continuation of this thread just wondering if there was a way to divide up Sydney into a grid and automatically check the progress of whether that zone has been mapped or not. Is there a standard approach for this?

On 06/06/18 08:51, Dion Moult wrote:> Thanks Andrew et all,>> Yes, I have used the ESRI imagery layer. Thanks for the heads up of the LPI base map. Before I go too far, can one of you please look at the work I've done so far if I'm doing things correctly? Here is a small sample in the suburb of Epping that I have traced houses and added addresses:>> https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/-33.78071/151.06628>> In that scenario I did not trace off the LPI imagery, but instead traced off ESRI. I noticed if I enable the LPI imagery, the houses don't line up. Should this be fixed? If so, what's the best way?

Any imagery can have a 'offset' from where it should be. And that offset will vary as you go up and down hills.

The LPI Imagery has much better resolution and less parallax error than the other sources .. I prefer it to any other images for its accuracy.

That said it is usefull to check with other images for more up to date things. I found in Coffs Harbour that the DigitalGlobe stuff is more current.

I'll leave others to comment on that address stuff.. no expert on that (yet). :)

As a continuation of this thread just wondering if there was a way to divide up Sydney into a grid and automatically check the progress of whether that zone has been mapped or not. Is there a standard approach for this?

> Yes, I have used the ESRI imagery layer. Thanks for the heads up of the LPI base map. Before I go too far, can one of you please look at the work I've done so far if I'm doing things correctly? Here is a small sample in the suburb of Epping that I have traced houses and added addresses:

As a continuation of this thread just wondering if there was a way to divide up Sydney into a grid and automatically check the progress of whether that zone has been mapped or not. Is there a standard approach for this?

> Yes, I have used the ESRI imagery layer. Thanks for the heads up of the LPI base map. Before I go too far, can one of you please look at the work I've done so far if I'm doing things correctly? Here is a small sample in the suburb of Epping that I have traced houses and added addresses:

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

For knowing "whats mapped" at a high level, I like http://qa.poole.ch - I believe it has filters for unmapped addresses.

On the ground stuff - streetcomplete does really well at prompting for things without address, highly recommend.

Setting up a task manager instance; I reckon it could make a lot of sense for us as a community. We seem to be a small group who punch above our weight in terms of how spread out we are but have much we have mapped.

Alternatively, maproulette tasks.

It seems to work well for US imports of address/buildings/etc; and its reasonable to expect that:

As a continuation of this thread just wondering if there was a way to divide up Sydney into a grid and automatically check the progress of whether that zone has been mapped or not. Is there a standard approach for this?

> Yes, I have used the ESRI imagery layer. Thanks for the heads up of the LPI base map. Before I go too far, can one of you please look at the work I've done so far if I'm doing things correctly? Here is a small sample in the suburb of Epping that I have traced houses and added addresses:

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

Hi Folks,

I must admit I have an ulterior motive for use of a AU based tasking manager as I do mapping for Australian Red Cross during emergencies. I have done the training for HOTOSM project manager but never actually used it. RC use OSM mapping as backgrounds for some of their work and on mobile devices so any improvements in data is always welcome.

I also think it may be a way to get others involved in structured OSM mapping albeit using an emergency as a catalyst. For instance if a cyclone or fire is active somewhere then use that to encourage checking of roads, buildings etc…pretty much what is done on the HOT tasking manager.

I encouraged building mapping (via slack groups) during Tathra fires and now most of the buildings are there.

A tasking manager would prevent duplication etc but I think it works best in smaller discrete areas rather than a state wide effort. I am happy to help out where I can but I am definitely just a user, not a programmer or coder.

For knowing "whats mapped" at a high level, I like http://qa.poole.ch - I believe it has filters for unmapped addresses.

On the ground stuff - streetcomplete does really well at prompting for things without address, highly recommend.

Setting up a task manager instance; I reckon it could make a lot of sense for us as a community. We seem to be a small group who punch above our weight in terms of how spread out we are but have much we have mapped.

Alternatively, maproulette tasks.

It seems to work well for US imports of address/buildings/etc; and its reasonable to expect that:

As a continuation of this thread just wondering if there was a way to divide up Sydney into a grid and automatically check the progress of whether that zone has been mapped or not. Is there a standard approach for this?

> Yes, I have used the ESRI imagery layer. Thanks for the heads up of the LPI base map. Before I go too far, can one of you please look at the work I've done so far if I'm doing things correctly? Here is a small sample in the suburb of Epping that I have traced houses and added addresses:

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

There are a number of task manger instances run outside of HOT
(which would really really not be an appropriate one). It's on the
other side of the world but please feel free to use our (SOSM)
instance http://tasks.osm.ch/ (which is currently mainly used for
coordinating an address import).

As a continuation of this thread just wondering if there was
a way to divide up Sydney into a grid and automatically
check the progress of whether that zone has been mapped or
not. Is there a standard approach for this?

On 06/06/18 08:51, Dion Moult wrote:
> Thanks Andrew et all,
>
> Yes, I have used the ESRI imagery layer. Thanks for
the heads up of the LPI base map. Before I go too far, can
one of you please look at the work I've done so far if I'm
doing things correctly? Here is a small sample in the
suburb of Epping that I have traced houses and added
addresses:
>
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/-33.78071/151.06628
>
> In that scenario I did not trace off the LPI imagery,
but instead traced off ESRI. I noticed if I enable the LPI
imagery, the houses don't line up. Should this be fixed?
If so, what's the best way?

Any imagery can have a 'offset' from where it should be.
And that offset will vary as you go up and down hills.

The LPI Imagery has much better resolution and less
parallax error than the other sources .. I prefer it to
any other images for its accuracy.

That said it is usefull to check with other images for
more up to date things. I found in Coffs Harbour that the
DigitalGlobe stuff is more current.

I'll leave others to comment on that address stuff.. no
expert on that (yet). :)

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

I had another look at the LPI resource and would like to propose a way of importing address data from LPI, because clearly sitting there for months on end armchair mapping the LPI Base Map as a raster underlay in JOSM is incredibly inefficient. Also, given that I am proposing an import, I would really appreciate community feedback to make sure I don't do anything wrong. First, I've looked at these two pages on usage of the LPI base map:

Unfortunately it seems as though their API doesn't have any function to give a DB dump of addresses inside a bounding box. However it does have two functions, one which allows you to query a coordinate and it'll tell you what is the closest address at that point at a screen resolution (slightly archaic, yes), and another function which allows you to submit an address and it'll tell you what the government thinks is the centroid of the property with that address. So if you whack a bunch of points in JOSM that are within the bounds of a property based off the LPI NSW Base Map as a raster layer in JOSM, you can do Edit->Copy Coordinates in JOSM, dump it in a file, and use a script I wrote which will query the LPI web services to find the address, then query it again to find the proper centroid lat/long, then create a CSV of points and addresses which you can import into JOSM. Here's the script with sample input and sample output:

With this method I reckon you can quite quickly and accurately import addresses for a suburb. Note that this only imports nodes. It is up to somebody else to draw buildings and so on. Note that this uses two web services, the NSW Address Location Service and the NSW Property Service. The former is already credited in the contributors page, but the latter is not yet - it will have to be added, I suspect.

For knowing "whats mapped" at a high level, I like http://qa.poole.ch - I believe it has filters for unmapped addresses.

On the ground stuff - streetcomplete does really well at prompting for things without address, highly recommend.

Setting up a task manager instance; I reckon it could make a lot of sense for us as a community. We seem to be a small group who punch above our weight in terms of how spread out we are but have much we have mapped.

Alternatively, maproulette tasks.

It seems to work well for US imports of address/buildings/etc; and its reasonable to expect that:

As a continuation of this thread just wondering if there was a way to divide up Sydney into a grid and automatically check the progress of whether that zone has been mapped or not. Is there a standard approach for this?

> Yes, I have used the ESRI imagery layer. Thanks for the heads up of the LPI base map. Before I go too far, can one of you please look at the work I've done so far if I'm doing things correctly? Here is a small sample in the suburb of Epping that I have traced houses and added addresses:

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

2. I like the idea of doing this semi-manually in JOSM. I'm against a completely automated import because we have addresses already in OSM from surveys which should be retained (and avoid having duplicates dumped on top).

4. We are still bound by the Terms and Conditions of using the web services at http://spatialservices.finance.nsw.gov.au/mapping_and_imagery/lpi_web_services/terms_and_conditions specifically "2.1.6. use any robot, spider, site search/retrieval application, or other device to retrieve or index any portion of the SWS". I've asked LPI about this before and was told it was okay as long as usage didn't affect other users, they were thankful that I asked first though. The way you're using the API I think is okay, but best to play it safe and be friendly with LPI on what we're doing in light of this clause.

I had another look at the LPI resource and would like to propose a way of importing address data from LPI, because clearly sitting there for months on end armchair mapping the LPI Base Map as a raster underlay in JOSM is incredibly inefficient. Also, given that I am proposing an import, I would really appreciate community feedback to make sure I don't do anything wrong. First, I've looked at these two pages on usage of the LPI base map:

Unfortunately it seems as though their API doesn't have any function to give a DB dump of addresses inside a bounding box. However it does have two functions, one which allows you to query a coordinate and it'll tell you what is the closest address at that point at a screen resolution (slightly archaic, yes), and another function which allows you to submit an address and it'll tell you what the government thinks is the centroid of the property with that address. So if you whack a bunch of points in JOSM that are within the bounds of a property based off the LPI NSW Base Map as a raster layer in JOSM, you can do Edit->Copy Coordinates in JOSM, dump it in a file, and use a script I wrote which will query the LPI web services to find the address, then query it again to find the proper centroid lat/long, then create a CSV of points and addresses which you can import into JOSM. Here's the script with sample input and sample output:

With this method I reckon you can quite quickly and accurately import addresses for a suburb. Note that this only imports nodes. It is up to somebody else to draw buildings and so on. Note that this uses two web services, the NSW Address Location Service and the NSW Property Service. The former is already credited in the contributors page, but the latter is not yet - it will have to be added, I suspect.

For knowing "whats mapped" at a high level, I like http://qa.poole.ch - I believe it has filters for unmapped addresses.

On the ground stuff - streetcomplete does really well at prompting for things without address, highly recommend.

Setting up a task manager instance; I reckon it could make a lot of sense for us as a community. We seem to be a small group who punch above our weight in terms of how spread out we are but have much we have mapped.

Alternatively, maproulette tasks.

It seems to work well for US imports of address/buildings/etc; and its reasonable to expect that:

As a continuation of this thread just wondering if there was a way to divide up Sydney into a grid and automatically check the progress of whether that zone has been mapped or not. Is there a standard approach for this?

> Yes, I have used the ESRI imagery layer. Thanks for the heads up of the LPI base map. Before I go too far, can one of you please look at the work I've done so far if I'm doing things correctly? Here is a small sample in the suburb of Epping that I have traced houses and added addresses:

Re: Mapping houses and addresses in Sydney

1. Thanks for the link to the import guidelines. My responses to the import guidelines below:

1. I am aware that big automatic updates can cause problems. I will only import addr:housenumber and addr:street and a single node.

2. Yep, sending to talk-au mailing list.

3. I think we have the appropriate license.

>=4. Looking for more feedback on talk-au first :)

2. Yes, you are absolutely right that this is not a huge automatic import - it relies on a human choosing what addresses to add and a human submitting it as a change. All it does it automate the address lookup and make sure that the node is neatly positioned at the correct location.

3. It looks like you're grabbing their entire dataset. That would be the alternative approach, doing a data dump, then importing that dump. This can import a lot more addresses, but is also much more complex. Is it worth pursuing? What do you reckon?

4. It seems odd that they would provide an API but would prevent anything from using it.

2. I like the idea of doing this semi-manually in JOSM. I'm against a completely automated import because we have addresses already in OSM from surveys which should be retained (and avoid having duplicates dumped on top).

4. We are still bound by the Terms and Conditions of using the web services at http://spatialservices.finance.nsw.gov.au/mapping_and_imagery/lpi_web_services/terms_and_conditions specifically "2.1.6. use any robot, spider, site search/retrieval application, or other device to retrieve or index any portion of the SWS". I've asked LPI about this before and was told it was okay as long as usage didn't affect other users, they were thankful that I asked first though. The way you're using the API I think is okay, but best to play it safe and be friendly with LPI on what we're doing in light of this clause.

I had another look at the LPI resource and would like to propose a way of importing address data from LPI, because clearly sitting there for months on end armchair mapping the LPI Base Map as a raster underlay in JOSM is incredibly inefficient. Also, given that I am proposing an import, I would really appreciate community feedback to make sure I don't do anything wrong. First, I've looked at these two pages on usage of the LPI base map:

Unfortunately it seems as though their API doesn't have any function to give a DB dump of addresses inside a bounding box. However it does have two functions, one which allows you to query a coordinate and it'll tell you what is the closest address at that point at a screen resolution (slightly archaic, yes), and another function which allows you to submit an address and it'll tell you what the government thinks is the centroid of the property with that address. So if you whack a bunch of points in JOSM that are within the bounds of a property based off the LPI NSW Base Map as a raster layer in JOSM, you can do Edit->Copy Coordinates in JOSM, dump it in a file, and use a script I wrote which will query the LPI web services to find the address, then query it again to find the proper centroid lat/long, then create a CSV of points and addresses which you can import into JOSM. Here's the script with sample input and sample output:

With this method I reckon you can quite quickly and accurately import addresses for a suburb. Note that this only imports nodes. It is up to somebody else to draw buildings and so on. Note that this uses two web services, the NSW Address Location Service and the NSW Property Service. The former is already credited in the contributors page, but the latter is not yet - it will have to be added, I suspect.

For knowing "whats mapped" at a high level, I like http://qa.poole.ch - I believe it has filters for unmapped addresses.

On the ground stuff - streetcomplete does really well at prompting for things without address, highly recommend.

Setting up a task manager instance; I reckon it could make a lot of sense for us as a community. We seem to be a small group who punch above our weight in terms of how spread out we are but have much we have mapped.

Alternatively, maproulette tasks.

It seems to work well for US imports of address/buildings/etc; and its reasonable to expect that:

As a continuation of this thread just wondering if there was a way to divide up Sydney into a grid and automatically check the progress of whether that zone has been mapped or not. Is there a standard approach for this?

> Yes, I have used the ESRI imagery layer. Thanks for the heads up of the LPI base map. Before I go too far, can one of you please look at the work I've done so far if I'm doing things correctly? Here is a small sample in the suburb of Epping that I have traced houses and added addresses: